Hello, all. I need some advce. My boyfriend, Zach has been raised in an extremely Christian household with an overbearing mother who actually works at the church and forces him to go to services incessantly. I'm new here, so I apologize if I'm not in the right place for this, but lately he has been skeptical and been asking me questions. I, myself, am an atheist. I feel like he wants to be freed from this, but I don't really know what to do or how I should help. Should I let him do this on his own, and answer his questions when needed? I just don't know. Sorry about the long post, I'm just confused.

I used to be a Christian, but I gave it up 30 years ago. Like Zach, I started to ask questions. I had friends who were willing to answer them as best they could and this helped me a lot. My friends did not pressure me to deconvert - and I figure such pressure would have been detrimental for I would have fought back against such pressure. Eventually, I deconverted myself.

What makes you feel hesitant to answering? Is it the type of questions being asked? Is it that you don't think you know enough on the subject of the questions? An uncertainty of how deep into the subject you feel okay with?

The more we know, the better we can help.

It's okay to not know - better than claiming you do and then running into issues.

Hey there, and welcome to the forum. I must say, I envy you for the situation you're in. None of my loved-ones even consider they might be wrong about their faith, so it's pretty much impossible for me to do anything about it.

You should start slowly. If he knows you're an atheist, you absolutely must not do anything to insult his god or his faith, not for now at least. Start out by pointing out the logical fallacies, the many, many contradictions and atrocities within the Bible, the historical evidence that goes against much that is written in it, and so on and so forth. You should at all times let him know you're not trying to shatter his faith, you're just trying to help him get a better understanding of what he believes in. If he thinks you're just struggling to get him to believe what you do he'll soon think of you as "that person" who tried to lure me into hell.

If he doesn't know you're an atheist, you should say you also had some doubts at some point and looked into it, then guide him through the same steps you took (if you were ever a believer).